


Passing Notes

by Springmagpies



Series: Valentine's Day Prompts [10]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Fluff, Gen, This got sappy all of a sudden, sappy but sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:35:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29349813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Springmagpies/pseuds/Springmagpies
Summary: It had been procrastination that had led Daisy to cleaning her room, but it was soon apparent that there were some diamonds among the rough.
Relationships: Leo Fitz & Skye | Daisy Johnson
Series: Valentine's Day Prompts [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2138130
Comments: 10
Kudos: 20





	Passing Notes

**Author's Note:**

> For the ever so wonderful @maybebrilliant! 💛

It was a spur of the moment, anxiety ridden, completely impromptu piece of procrastination that led to Daisy cleaning her room. Not just picking up the dirty laundry her mother had been giving her the eyebrows of doom about for a week or finally throwing away her soda can tower, but rather full till, tear out every article of clothing from your closet, sort things on the floor, deep clean the baseboards kind of cleaning. 

“Is this because of Mr. Randolph's essay?” Fitz asked, sitting with his legs crossed on her bed as he held open the garbage bag. 

Daisy chucked her armful of soda cans. “No,” she said. 

Fitz shot her a very knowing glance. 

“Okay, kind of. I don’t understand the prompt.”

“I think I understand the prompt,” he said. They were in the class together and he too was procrastinating the essay. However, instead of procrastinating productively by cleaning his room, he was instead watching as Daisy cleaned hers. And holding open the garbage bag, a vital part of the process. 

Another can clattered into the garbage. “Of course you understand the prompt, Fitz. You’re brilliant.”

“At science,” he countered, “not at a college level World History class.”

“You’re brilliant at whatever you set your mind to,” she said. She tossed the last of the soda tower into the bag and ruffled his hair before flopping down onto the floor. “I on the other hand am a mess at pretty much every subject minus computer tech.”

Fitz kicked her knee. “Not true.”

Daisy narrowed her eyes skeptically, asking the silent question of  _ really?  _

“You’re good at plenty of things,” Fitz continued, “like gymnastics, and art… getting other’s off task.”

That earned him a pillow to the head, but it only made him laugh harder which of course then earned him a random piece of dirty laundry to the face. Getting hit by a dirty sports bra shut him up pretty fast and gave Daisy her own opportunity to laugh.

“Will you stop laughing at my expense and get back to work?” he grumbled. He had discarded the sports bra back into its dirty pile, wiping his hand on his shirt once he was rid of it. Daisy rolled her eyes and turned back to the project at hand. 

“You’re a dork,” she said. 

“And you’re a butt face,” he shot back. It was a phrase he had picked up from Jemma and it had slowly wormed its way into being used by the entirety of their friend group. Even Mack, who would never have normally said such a thing with a straight face, found himself using it as a genuine insult in heated arguments. 

Ignoring the butt face comment, Daisy pulled a box labeled  _ Random Crap  _ towards her. She had emptied her entire closet and dresser onto the ground and the  _ Random Crap  _ box had been part of the fray. 

“Is there any organization in your methods?” Fitz laughed as Daisy dumped the box’s contents onto the floor.

Daisy shot him a straight-mouthed glare. “Yes. How dare ye question me methods.”

“How dare ye? What the hell was that Dais?”

“I don’t know, my dad’s making me watch some show set in the middle ages.”

“Is it any good?” Fitz asked so genuinely that Daisy snorted. 

“My dad loves it, so… no. But shut ye mouth and stop harping on my organization tactics.”

“Or lack thereof.”

“I have a whole pile of dirty clothes at my disposal, Fitz. Don’t test me.”

Fitz rolled his hand for Daisy to continue with her “cleaning” in whatever strange way she was going about it. 

The box labeled  _ Random Crap  _ was not lying about its contents. The entirety of the small pile had no commonality nor rhyme nor reason. It was all across the board time wise, the objects dating as far back as Daisy’s toddler-hood and as recent as a week previously. There were papers, desk toys, broken pencils that probably had had some emotional significance at one point in time. There were late slips that she had forgotten to chuck alongside movie ticket stubs from dates long passed. Slowly she and Fitz--he had come to sit on the floor by her, the trash bag at his side--started to pick away at the contents of the box. They sorted them into piles of keep and chuck. Keep was a pile to Daisy’s left and chuck was the soda can graveyard on Fitz’s right. 

They worked in silence--silence apart from the music coming from Daisy’s phone--for nearly fifteen minutes when the quiet was very suddenly interrupted. Fitz had found a collection of origami animals. The majority of the paper zoo was composed of monkeys, but there were also a fair few cranes, a whale, a mouse, a fox, and a duo of jumping frogs. They all appeared to be made out of old math assignments, gum wrappers, late slips, and other odds and ends one would find in a backpack. Fitz made to open the trash bag when Daisy launched herself forward and toppled him to the ground.

“What the bloody hell, Dais?” he spluttered, his face pressed into the floor. 

“Don’t throw those away!” she said, her stomach pressed on his back. 

“Okay!” he choked, his voice lacking air, “I won’t throw them away! Can you get off my back, please?”

She quickly slipped back to her spot. “Oh, right. Sorry. Gut instinct.”

“To attack me?”

“To protect my zoo.”

She held out her hands as if she were Oliver begging for some more gruel. Fitz quickly dropped the menagerie into her outstretched palms, dusting off his hands as if they had burned him. He had been slammed into the ground for them after all, so his reaction was justified. 

“Why are you so determined to keep them?” he asked, turning back to pick at the pile. “They’re just folded up trash.” 

Her brows drew together and she shook her head. The strangest look had fallen onto her face and Fitz actually stopped with his hand in midair when he caught sight of it. 

“What?” he asked, his voice twinged with worry. The look in Daisy’s eyes was sadder than he expected it to be and his heart dropped in fear that his comments had hurt her.

“My zoo isn’t trash,” she said. She closed her eyes for a moment. “Okay, yes, it’s trash, but I love it.”

When he continued to look at her with eyes of confusion, a slight smile broke onto her face.

“I love it because it’s from you,” she explained. 

“I know it’s from me, but I don’t see--”

“Because you gave them to me.” She carefully sifted through the paper animals in her hand until she found a specific one she was looking for. It was a very tattered monkey, made up of a piece of yellow legal paper. 

“Do you remember this?” she asked him, holding up the monkey.

A blush crept onto Fitz’s cheeks. “I passed that to you in biology. The week after we became friends.”

“Remember the note it has on it?” she asked. 

“Something embarrassing on my part,” he said. 

“No. It was our game of tic-tac-toe. You won, and in victory you turned it into a monkey.”

Fitz laughed, the memory flooding back. It was the thing that started their note passing tradition. He could have hit himself for forgetting. 

“And you kept it?” he chuckled. “Four years later and you still have it.”

She sat up taller. “Of course I do. And I’ll keep it for as long as I can.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s from you. Not just you. Baby you. Sweet little curly haired freshman you. My first real friend. You were my first real friend and you passed me little origami monkeys and smiled at me in class and ran up to me in the halls and waited to walk with me to lunch.”

Fitz didn’t know what to say. He wanted to say she meant the same to him, that he couldn’t imagine a world without her, that she was his first real friend as well and that he treasured every single thing about their friendship. The words got stuck however and all he could do was blink at her. 

“Of course you’re a total asshole now, but I still love you,” she said. Lightly placing down her paper animals, Daisy looked back down at the pile before them. In the brief moment her eyes were on the ground, Fitz had crossed the distance on his knees and wrapped his arms around her. He was never good at saying how he felt in any form, so he hoped the hug said everything it needed to.

It did. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on Tumblr @springmagpies! 💛


End file.
